Futurologists’ predictions that insects would become part of our diets are finally coming true. A company based just outside Parramatta is incorporating nutrient-dense crickets into consumer-friendly products such as corn chips, brownie batter and pasta.

But these are not your average crickets. Rather, the insects are bred for human consumption at Australia’s largest cricket farm, Circle Harvest, which is expanding due to growing demand.

The facility now produces several tonnes of cricket protein a month, which it uses to create pantry items and snack foods that sell in select IGA and Panetta Mercado supermarkets.

“We create familiar foods that people eat all the time and enrich them with invisible insect proteins,” says founder, entomologist and food scientist Skye Blackburn, who notes a jump in sales over the past three years, as public education increased.

Blackburn presented Circle Harvest’s raspberry chocolate brownies (fortified with cricket powder) at SXSW Sydney last week, as part of the technology and innovation festival’s panel discussions on the future of food.

Despite the unusual addition, the flavour and texture remained indiscernible from the average brownie, a testament to how far the alternative protein industry has come.

Blackburn says you can swap high-calorie snacks for Circle Harvest’s corn chips, which are still salty and crunchy but also provide protein, calcium, iron, vitamin b12, zinc, magnesium and omega 3. “It makes adding insect proteins to your diet very accessible.”

Sustainable alternative proteins, such as insects, are key to combating global food security challenges, says CSIRO scientist Michelle Cosgrove during a SXSW panellist discussion.

That’s because, by 2050, the global population is estimated to reach 9.7 billion people (an increase of about 2 billion), requiring the production of about 60 per cent more food, around half of which must be protein.

“The biggest challenge is, how do we do that without increasing the amount of land we’re using?” she asked.

Seventy-seven per cent of agricultural land is used to farm animals. That land supplies just 17 per cent of the global food supply, and it’s increasingly vulnerable to the effects of climate change.

“This model simply can’t scale to meet future demand,” says James Petrie, founder and CEO of food technology company Nourish Ingredients. “We don’t have enough land or resources.”

Freaky food coming your way

Crickets farmed indoors, at scale, is just the beginning. From colour-changing plant mince, to food brewed “out of thin air”, these are the most intriguing food technologies to emerge from SXSW.

RepliHueTM by v2Food

In an effort to mimic the experience of cooking traditional meat, Australian plant-based protein company v2Food harnessed the power of (carbon-absorbing) red algae to create RepliHueTM. The ingredient, when added to plant-based mince, enables the colour to change from a “raw” pink to a brown “cooked”, at the same time and temperature as animal meat would. Acclaimed chef and restaurateur Neil Perry, who unveiled the technology during a cooking demonstration, says it “won’t replace a rib-eye at Rockpool” but it does enable people to consume less meat while still eating a product with a familiar flavour, texture and cooking profile.

Tastilux by Nourish Ingredients

Nourish Ingredients believes fat is the key to making plant-based protein taste better. To create the world’s first animal-free fat, their team of scientists identified the flavour-contributing fats in meat at a molecular level and matched them up to molecules found in fungal strains in Australian soil. Then, using precision fermentation (a process similar to home brewing), they transform that microbial yeast into fat. The company is working with global food manufacturers to incorporate Tastilux into a wide range of products, such as the “chicken wing” that debuted at SXSW. “It really [gives] the same sensation as biting into a chicken wing,” said presenter Rove McManus.

Duckweed in space by Future Crops Development

Given the unlikelihood of successfully transporting livestock into space, the federally funded Future Crops Development program aims to discover (or develop) a nutrient-dense crop capable of growing at the International Space Station and eventually, even on Mars. Plant glycobiologist Jenny Mortimer says duckweed (a neutral-tasting, high-protein aquatic plant) may be the solution. It needs little water or light and is already recognised as entirely edible. “Axiom wants to have a small vertical garden with edible plants going up to the International Space Station in the next couple of years, and then in five to 10 years we could have an entire vertical farm operating in lower earth orbit,” Mortimer says.

Air meat by Air Protein

Cosgrove says several universities and start-ups worldwide are exploring the process of “gas fermentation” to create edible protein sources out of the microorganisms found in air. US company Air Protein, for example, makes “air meat” by whisking together excess atmospheric carbon dioxide, oxygen and hydrogen gas with edible microbes, allowing them to ferment into a protein (using a process similar to that of yoghurt or cheese production). This is then dried into flour and added to products such as plant-based meat. “Some prototypes are being tasted but are not in [the] mainstream or at scale,” Cosgrove says. “We would expect to see these technologies entering the market in coming years, scaled within a decade.”